Lighten Up

For a couple of picoseconds there the other day, the political world was shocked -- shocked! -- to learn that congressional aides don't always behave like choirboys.

After union groups launched a television ad critical of Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, Cantor's new press secretary, Brad Dayspring, responded to a reporter's inquiry by e-mailing a long-circulated, richly profane (and -- let's face it -- mildly funny) YouTube spoof of a union promotional video. Dayspring says he meant it as an off-the-record joke.

Dumb move? Sure. Absent a signed affidavit stipulating otherwise, press secretaries -- particularly Republican ones -- ought to act as though they are always on the record.

Is Dayspring's mistake the moral equivalent of child molestation, as union interests tried to portray it? Of course not. Anyone who thinks Washington's players never act like oil-rig roughnecks instead of cherubim is living in a fantasy world. Why, even union members have been known to use a mild oath or two, on rare occasions. (Indeed, that very fact makes the YouTube spoof possible.) Still, as one blogger noted: "Republicans should never e-mail jokes of any sort. It never ends well."

The mini-scandal is -- like so much else in politics -- cheap kabuki. Cantor's critics issued ostensibly earnest and censorious statements denouncing the "childish, inappropriate, and disgusting behavior from someone who is supposed to be a leader in" yadda yadda yadda. Americans United for Change sent out an e-mail blast reading, "Eric Cantor Attacks Government Workers, Spreads Filthy, Profanity-Laced Video and Treats Economic Crisis Like a Joke." That was factually incorrect -- but why get hung up on the facts?

Cantor's prominence as a leader of the GOP minority shines a brighter set of klieg lights on his office. Yet it doesn't make the whole affair any less superficial. One day soon, no doubt, someone on the other side of the aisle will do something foolish -- and Republicans will pretend they, too, are shocked to the core. Same actors; same script; only the roles ever change.